Her first seed order came from June Palmer. The second came from Della Finch's sister, who lived several counties away and grew tomatoes along a sunny fence. Then a customer visiting the market from out of state asked whether Mary Ann could ship a packet legally to his home. She checked the relevant requirements before agreeing, recorded the lot number, and mailed it in a padded envelope with a simple thank-you note. The next week an email arrived containing a photograph of a prepared garden bed and the message, Looking forward to seeing what grows.
She read the message twice before answering. There was something astonishing about the idea that a selection she had made behind Walter's old shed could take root somewhere she had never been. Yet the scale remained small. She was mailing a handful of packets at a time, not running an industrial seed company, and every order seemed to create two new administrative tasks. She adjusted the prices to include realistic packaging and postage expenses rather than treating the extra work as free.
Meanwhile Daniel's restaurant continued ordering, and three other restaurants began buying modest quantities during the season. One was a small farm-to-table place north of town, another was a family-run Italian restaurant that loved Little Paste for sauces, and the fourth was a seasonal restaurant attached to a lakeside inn. None placed enormous orders. Together they gave Mary Ann enough repeat business to reduce her dependence on any one buyer, while the market remained a place where she could hear directly what people liked and what disappointed them.
The question of processed products arose because even a well-managed tomato farm produced fruit that was unsuitable for premium fresh sale. Some tomatoes were perfectly sound but oddly shaped. Others ripened together faster than customers could use them. Mary Ann had grown up around canning, but she knew that selling packaged food required more than putting an old family recipe in a jar and tying a ribbon around it.
She enrolled in a food-processing workshop and consulted the county about using an inspected commercial kitchen and approved processes for anything intended to be stored and sold. For her first tests she worked with a licensed shared kitchen in town, following the approved procedures and keeping ingredients and batch records. The fees reduced her margins, but they also made the products something she could sell responsibly rather than merely hope would be safe. She began with a small batch of slow-roasted tomatoes made under suitable controls and a dried tomato product she could package within the applicable requirements.
The first roasting day was exhausting. Mary Ann loaded and unloaded trays, tracked weights, checked labels, and discovered that the amount of finished product was much smaller than the amount of fresh fruit she had brought. The aroma filled the kitchen and reminded her of summer suppers with Walter, but the work was not sentimental. It was hot, repetitive, and regulated for reasons she was beginning to respect deeply.